Excavating the Academia/Policy Pipeline: Economic analysis at the Bank of England Pre and Post-Crisis

CEE

Promoteur :  Clément Fontan

Financement : Economic and social research council (ESRC) & Rebuilding Macroeconomics

The Bank of England (BoE) holds a peculiar place among central banks in the Western World. At first glance, it seems more entrepreneurial in the type of research papers it publi-shes, with strong stances taken on financial regulation (in particular on structural reform of banking), distributional effects of quantitative easing, central bank digital curren-cies or climate change. The BoE also fosters methodologi-cal  innovation,  as  exemplified  by  Andy  Haldane’s  recent  interest in agent-based modelling. Yet, it is not clear to what extent the macroeconomic policies it implements, or the macroeconometric models its economists rely on for forecasting, simulation and policy analysis, substantially differ from those implemented in other central banks or taught in departments of economics. In this project, we thus propose to combine quantitative analysis, semi-structured interviews and archival evidence to assess the state of the knowledge produced by BoE economists, their background, networks, influences and impact, and to track the historical roots of their underlying modelling culture back into the 1970s to 2010